Cristyne Lategano: Power Behind Throne

June 19, 1995

Following the subway crash on the Williamsburg Bridge two weeks ago,
the mayor's communications director, Cristyne Lategano, chewed out a
high-ranking police official at the crash site, police and City Hall
sources say. The official's sin? Arranging a news briefing for reporters
without clearing it with her.

But the official had checked with City Hall and was told that since
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was not coming to the bridge, it was OK to hold
the briefing. City Hall sources say Lategano acknowleged to her staff
she had overreacted but declined to call the police official to apologize.
No one dared advise her otherwise. Everyone's afraid of her.

Lategano denies the incident occurred. But around One Police
Plaza, she's not feared without reason. Lategano is credited
with dismantling the entire Police Department public information office
and for publicly criticizing Police Commissioner William Bratton, saying
during his flap with Giulaini that Bratton needed "a reality
check."

Police and other sources say she has been
no less charitable to the cops on the mayor's security detail. They
are said to be "scared
stiff" of her.

A year and a half into the Giuliani administration, Lategano, 30, has
developed such influence with the mayor that many at City Hall and One
Police Plaza say she has usurped the position of Peter Powers
- the first deputy and Giuliani's friend since boyhood - as the mayor's
closest confidant. No one disputes Lategano is smart, works tirelessly
and is single-minded in her dedication to the mayor. She also shares
- and many say plays on - the mayor's disdain toward the media. As one
insider said, "She jacks him up."

Lategano became Giuliani's press secretary with limited journalistic
experience. After graduating from Rutgers University in 1987, she worked
for a year as a spokeswoman in the Washington, D.C., office of U.S. Rep.
Helen Bentley of Maryland, then for the Republican National Committee.
In 1992 she worked for George Bush's New Jersey re-election campaign
before joining the Giuliani mayoral campaign a year later.

On March 31 she was promoted (with a $ 25,000
raise) to the post of communications director, a position that didn't
exist in previous mayoral administrations. Giuliani said of her then, "Cristyne
has been doing at least two jobs . . . Since she has been performing
both roles so well it made sense to recognize it with the promotion."

In her new position she no longer deals with reporters daily but is
responsible for what Giuliani described as "developing communications
strategy for the administration."

She is also responsible for Giuliani's public
scheduling and "more
or less" schedules herself to accompany the mayor to evening functions,
she said. Her promotion also merited a newly converted basement office
that is connected to the mayor's office through an inner door.

Three days before her promotion, an article
in New York Newsday reported the mayor shopping with Lategano for a
dress on a Sunday afternoon. In the past two months the mayor's wife,
Donna Hanover Giuliani, has begun appearing more often in public with
the mayor, though Lategano said Friday in an interview that it was "absolutely ridiculous to make a correlation" between
Hanover's increased appearances and the article.

New York Newsday also reported last month that Giuliani's political
strategist, David Garth, credited with playing a key role in Giuliani's
1993 election, recently told Giuliani to drop Lategano. Instead, Giuliani
dropped Garth.

Insiders say Powers has since refrained from
discussing Lategano with the mayor. Powers said: "There's no reason
to discuss anything [about Lategano] with the mayor at all."

In an interview in her office, Lategano said
of her critics: "A
lot of people have their own agendas here."

She described her alleged flap on the Brooklyn
Bridge with a police official as "absolutely crazy." Of her appearances with the
mayor, she said, "He [Giuliani] prefers a press secretary with
him at all times."

Rubes. The New York City
Internal Affairs Conference at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
brought national and international police corruption investigators
here for two days. A glossy program was filled with bios of Commissioner
Bratton and Internal Affairs Chief Pat Kelleher, as well as such local
lights as Mayor Giuliani, New York's FBI head, James Kallstrom; Chief
Assistant Bronx District Attorney Barry Kluger; and WCBS' Jerry Nachman.
And on the brochure's last page, for all those visitors to the Big
Apple, was an open space under the heading "Autographs."

Fainting. Lisa Caliandro,
the Staten Island police officer at the heart of the latest NYPD contretemps,
is now saying she wasn't drinking in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., the
night of the brawl between NYPD and local cops. Police euphemistically
used the term "fainted" to
describe what happened to her after she and her husband were arrested
there. But, responding to a reporter's question about her drinking that
night, Internal Affairs Chief Kelleher acknowledged that a more accurate
description could be that Caliandro had "passed out."